Ole Miss: Parking precious at home games

OXFORD — The University of Mississippi is ending free parking on campus on football game days.

The school wants the Oxford-University Transit public bus line to add Saturday service to help get people on and off of campus.

The Oxford Eagle reports (http://bit.ly/10YsGqv ) that the public transit system hasn’t said no — but it hasn’t said yes either.

“We are wanting OUT to help out on Saturday for game days,” Linda Christian with Ole Miss Parking and Transportation Services told the OUT committee this week.

No more free parking will be allow on campus on game days, according to the Ole Miss Alumni Association newsletter released Tuesday. Anyone planning to park on campus must purchase a parking pass. Ole Miss Athletic Foundation members are being given the first opportunity to request a season parking pass. Memberships start at $50 and a seasonal parking pass is $100.

After Aug. 1, any of the approximately 6,000 available passes that remain will go on sale to the general public.

In addition, parking on sidewalks will be prohibited to fulfill requirements recently mandated for accessible parking, which equals about 800 parking spots that will no longer be available.

Officials say for those unable to obtain one of the campus parking passes, more shuttles will be available from locations off campus.

“There is quite a bit of information we need to get out about things changing for the upcoming school year including football,” said Isaac Astill, Ole Miss director of parking and transportation. “We are still working on some of it but plan to have it out soon (to the public).”

City Planner Tim Akers said the city already contracts with Carbo Limo, which runs the city’s shuttle service on game days.

The $5 shuttle allows football game-goers to park at the Oxford Activity Center, the Oxford Conference Center and Oxford Middle School all day and ride the shuttle onto campus.

“We feel there may be a conflict if we run the (OUT) bus on game days,” Akers said. “We did have some discussions and even if we could find a way where we wouldn’t be violating our contract (with Carbo Limo), we’d have to establish routes and when we ran some numbers … we backed off because of the cost.”